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In this book, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet C. K. Williams sets aside the mass of biography and literary criticism that has accumulated around the work and person of Walt Whitman, and attempts to go back to Leaves of Grass as he first encountered it, to explore why Whitman's epic "continues to inspire and sometimes daunt" him. The result is a personal reassessment and appreciation of one master poet by another, as well as an unconventional and brilliant introduction - or reintroduction - to Whitman.

Herman Melville's epic tale of obsession has all the ingredients of a first rate drama - fascinating characters in solitude and society, battles between good and evil, a thrilling chase to the death - and yet its allusions, digressions, and sheer scope can prove daunting to even the most intrepid listener. George Cotkin's Dive Deeper provides both a guide to the novel and a record of its dazzling cultural train. It supplies easy-to-follow plot points for each of the novel's 135 sections before taking up a salient phrase, image, or idea in each for further exploration.

Reflecting cultural, political, and technological changes, this detailed exploration of Canadian book publishing displays trends of the industry from the last 50 years. Against the backdrop of historical highlights, the book dives into modern events in book publishing, focusing on the explosion of national book publishing in the 1970s and detailing the sparring match between the industry and government during the 1970s through the 1990s.

In The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1820-21), Irving explores the uneasy relationship of an American writer to English literary traditions. In two sketches, he experiments with tales transplanted from Europe, thereby creating the first classic American short stories: "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow".

A rich and varied collection of contemporary short stories, extracts from novels, and poetry that will go a long way toward informing the English-speaking world of the latest developments in Iranian literature. This sampling - or to use the Farsi term golchine, a bouquet - provides a window onto an important but sorely neglected segment of world culture. We hope it will also serve to awaken further interest in the work and in translations of Iranian novelists and poets.

From the sleek Aston Martin that spits out bullets, nails, and passengers at the push of a button to the microjet that makes hairpin turns to avoid a heat-seeking missile, the science and technology of James Bond films have kept millions of movie fans guessing for decades. Are these amazing feats and gadgets truly possible? The Science of James Bond takes you on a fascinating excursion through the true science that underlies Bond's most fantastic and off-the-wall accoutrements.

A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland From Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public, commonly referred to as A Modest Proposal, is a Juvenalian satirical essay written and published anonymously by Jonathan Swift in 1729. Swift suggests in his essay that the impoverished Irish might ease their economic troubles by selling children as food. By doing this he mocks the authority of the British officials.

In this groundbreaking work of cultural history, Alice Fahs explores a little-known and fascinating side of the Civil War--the outpouring of popular literature inspired by the conflict. From 1861 to 1865, authors and publishers in both the North and the South produced a remarkable variety of war-related compositions, including poems, songs, children's stories, romances, novels, histories, and even humorous pieces.

In his latest collection, I Love You More Than You Know, Ames proves once again his immense talent for turning his own adventures, neuroses, joys, heartaches, and insights into profound and hilarious tales. Alive with love and tenderness for his son, his parents, his great-aunt, and even strangers in bars late at night, in I Love You More Than You Know Ames looks beneath the surface of our world to find the beauty in the perverse, the sweetness in loneliness, and the humor in pain.

Raymond Chandler was one of the most original and enduring crime novelists of the 20th century. Yet much of his pre-writing life, including his unconventional marriage, has remained shrouded in mystery. In this compelling, wholly original book, Judith Freeman sets out to solve the puzzle of who Chandler was and how he became the writer who would create in Philip Marlowe an icon of American culture.

Grand Expectations, the 10th volume of the peerless Oxford History of the United States, weaves the major political, cultural, and economic events of the period into a superb portrait of America from 1945 through Watergate.

A World War II sailor works in a New York City brothel - for his country. After being arrested in a gay brothel in New York during a raid, Seaman Second Class Hank Fayette doesn't understand why his homosexual activities are grounds for imprisonment. The brothel is rumored to be a hangout for Nazi spies and the Navy forces Hank to go undercover as a prostitute. They hope to use clandestine sexuality to retrieve clandestine intelligence. However, after Hank becomes friendly with a black teenager named Juke, nothing seems to go as planned.

Among the unconventional attitudes of the Beat writers as they rebelled against the conformism of the late 1940s and 1950s was their relaxed stance on sexuality. At a time when gay people were considered mentally ill or criminal, the Beats celebrated spontaneity and freedom in thought, word, and action. They were queer in the fullest sense of the word: their fluid sexuality challenged all sexual and romantic conventions.

In his novels and short stories, Gabriel García Márquez has transformed the particulars of his own life and the lives of his fellow Colombians into wondrous fiction. While telling the story of the sloppily dressed, skinny young man who rose from obscurity as a provincial journalist to international fame as the progenitor of a new literature, Gerald Martin also considers the tensions in García Márquez's life between celebrity and the personal quest for literary quality, between politics and writing, and between the seductions of power, solitude, and love.

Under the Glacier represents Nobel laureate Halldor Laxness at his entertaining and brilliantly inventive best. Philosophy, theological speculation and charming wit combine to make this novel a timeless fable of modern times. A youthful emissary of the Bishop of Iceland travels to the beautiful and mysterious district of Snæfellsnes, locally known as "Under Glacier" to investigate the affairs of the parish and its enigmatic pastor.

Blending confessional criticism and anthropological autobiography, Shields explores the power of literature (from Blaise Pascal's Penses to Maggie Nelson's Bluets, Renata Adler's Speedboat to Proust's A Remembrance of Things Past) to make life survivable, maybe even endurable. Shields evokes his deeply divided personality (his "ridiculous" ambivalence), his character flaws, his woes, his serious despairs.

William Faulkner was the greatest American novelist of the 20th century, yet he lived a life marked by a pervasive sense of failure. Throughout his career, he remained haunted by his inability to master a series of personal and professional challenges: his less-than-heroic military career; the loss of his brother in an airplane crash; a disappointing stint as a Hollywood screenwriter; and a destructive bout with alcoholism.

Pamela Paul has kept a single book by her side for 28 years - carried throughout high school and college, hauled from Paris to London to Thailand, from job to job, safely packed away and then carefully removed from apartment to house to its current perch on a shelf over her desk - reliable if frayed, anonymous-looking yet deeply personal. This book has a name: Bob. Bob is Paul's Book of Books, a journal that records every book she's ever read.

Game of Thrones, book and show alike, is spun from classic myth, from the tales of Robin Hood and King Arthur to the Norse Ring Cycle and saga of Ragnarok. Above all these human adventures soar Daenerys' dragons adapted from the dragons, wyverns, and wyrms of Western bestiaries. But what about the merlings, seal folk, wargs, greenseers, grumpkins, and snarks: Which mythologies created them?

In the second volume of her memoirs, prize-winning author Janice Galloway reveals how the child introduced in This is Not About Me evolved through her teenage years. When she started secondary school, Galloway was still sharing a bed with her mother and was more excited by Latin and school orchestra than by boys. But as she struggled with the physical and emotional changes of adolescence, almost everything she thought she knew began to change. Combining visceral descriptions of puberty, sex and school-room politics with the story of a family's secrets